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The Little Egret Press is
proud to invite you to order this fine
re-publication by
author and renowned angler Dennis Pye.
"The
Way I Fish" is considered by many to be one of
the classic pike fishing books, but with in its pages
you’ll read chapters on Rudd fishing and how to go about
fishing the Norfolk broad s for which Dennis Pye was
famous.
During the early 1950s, coarse angling in Britain was
going through a major revolution. Dick Walker and the
members of the Carp Catchers' Club had begun to bring
carp fishing out of the dark ages and other pioneering
names, specialising in other species, were becoming well
known in the angling world.
Names such as Fred J Taylor, Peter Stone and Bernard
Venables. |
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Pike fishing in the
1950s was also going through its own revolution, in
particular the development of the static deadbait as a
supremely efficientway to catch pike of all sizes. Fred
J Taylor and Bill Giles of Norfolk were both
experimenting with this new and exciting method at
around the same period; but on the pike scene in the
1950s, one name in particular burst upon the angling
world in a blaze of publicity with a string of big pike
captures from the Norfolk Broads' River Thurne system;
and these pike were captured on the age-old method of
livebaiting.
That angler's name was Dennis Pye and he stamped his own
identity on pike fishing in Broadland - an identity that
is still felt today; and he never used deadbaits for
pike. His reason was simple. His livebaiting methods
were
successful enough. He refined the standard livebaiting
methods of the time by using a light,'dumbell float' and
leadless tackle on a greased line, his large livebait
mounted onto a size 2 Jardine snap tackle.
His tackle today seems very unbalanced but it worked for
him - ten pound line matched to the Dennis Pye 4 lb test
curve, 10 foot cane rod would seem to encourage a line
breakage on the strike, but Dennis had a reason for the
finer 10 pound line. It gave the livebait more freedom
than a thicker line and tired the bait less quickly.
So, with this tackle, using only one method and fishing
only one rod, Dennis Pye carved out an impressive
reputation within pike fishing as he pursued his one aim
- to break the English pike record with a monster from
his
beloved Norfolk Broads.
Without doubt, he was one of the great pike anglers of
his generation, but there are those that would question
some aspects of Dennis Pye¹s reputation and it is
possible that some of these criticisms are well founded
and that
sometimes, he was prone to exaggeration. But Dennis Pye
was not concerned with small pike.
He was after a record !!!
Dennis Pye was inspirational to generation of pike
anglers. Many pikers will relate closely to his love of
big pike located within the vast wilderness that is the
Thurne system. Today, Pike are not easy to find on
the Thurne
system. I envy him the pre-prymnesium pike fishing there
during the 1950s and '60s.
He didn't catch his record, but he did catch many large
pike on the way and he has left a lasting legacy to all
modern-day pikemen.
Stephen Harper...Foulsham, Norfolk. February,
2006
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The Way I Fish by
Dennis Pye